The Gamal (2 page)

Read this too. It’s about a thing called Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

PTSD

PTSD is not diagnosed unless the symptoms last for at least one month. The symptoms are severe and interfere with normal social functioning. A person with PTSD will have the following types of symptoms:

Re-experiencing Symptoms

Re-experiencing symptoms involve reliving the traumatic event. Memories of the traumatic event can return unexpectedly or can be triggered by a distinct reminder such as when a combat veteran hears a car backfire. This can cause a ‘flashback’ where the patient reacts emotionally and physically in a similar way that he/she did during the original trauma.

Arousal Symptoms

Patients will have increased emotional arousal (hyperarousal), and it can cause difficulty sleeping, outbursts of anger or irritability, and difficulty concentrating. They may find that they are constantly ‘on guard’, alert and on the lookout for signs of danger. They are often easily startled.

Avoidance

The hyperarousal and the re-experiencing symptoms become so distressing that the patient strives to avoid contact with everything and everyone which may arouse memories of the trauma. The patient isolates themselves and can experience so-called emotional detachment (‘numbing’).

Dissociation

Dissociation may arise from feelings of depersonalisation and detachment, where there is a disconnection between memory and effect. The patient will appear to be ‘in another world’. In severe forms this can involve ‘losing time’, where a patient may have no recollection of his/her actions. This ‘losing time’ may involve multiple personalities or may be a result of emotional detachment or ‘numbing’.

That’s a cut and paste job from the internet. I was diagnosed with PTSD. But I think Sinéad might have had it too only no one ever bothered to notice. Maybe everyone has it a bit after shit happens to them. Reminded me of Old Master Higgins saying that the people of Ireland got an awful shock. Sometimes people just kind of go autopilot isn’t it? Old Master Higgins got fired cos he cursed in class. I was there when he did it. Some poor child asked him why Queen Elizabeth banned the harp long ago and he went on a drunken rant cursing and blinding for five minutes. I wasn’t there when they buried him about four months ago. I was probably the only one in the whole parish not at the funeral but I couldn’t go cos I wasn’t well and even if they asked if I wanted to go they wouldn’t have got an answer.

But I’m getting better now. I’m probably better now than I ever was. I’ve done away with some of my daft old ways. Like I don’t sleep upside down any more. Before the stuff that happened I used to listen to music the whole time. Well not the whole time. But nearly the whole time. Except when I was hanging around with Sinéad and James. But usually we were listening to music anyway. If they weren’t making it. After the bad stuff I became kind of sick. I didn’t do nothing for two years. I was awake but I was in a coma. I used to always be sleeping upside down on the bed before though. My head used to be where your feet are supposed to be. You see my stereo was down the end of the bed cos there was no room for it any place else. So I slept upside down. I’d them long earphones and the music could reach my ears if I was lying upside down on the bed. That way I could always listen to my music loud as I liked even when the mother and father were asleep. I’d listen to Sinéad too. Tapes of her.

But I don’t listen to music now any more. And my concentration is better now too. If you were talking away to me now with your normal boring everyday shit I’d probably be able to listen to you and my mind wouldn’t be gone off thinking about Sinéad or some tune or Sinéad singing the tune or just the look of her.

The door next to my bedroom is the door of the spare room. It has a hole in it the shape of my foot cos my father thought he could get me out of the bed if he played some music that I used to listen to in the spare room. The father has cardboard covering the hole in the door now. Stuck on with duct tape. He must think that looks better than the hole. Anyhow that was the end of my father’s stupid schemes and I went back to bed for another twelve months or more.

But that’s the father to a fucking tee. Thinks he knows everything just cos he has a head full of correct answers. Quizzes and questions and rivers and wars. We used to watch
Quiz Time
on the telly together the whole time and I small.

—What is the capital of Portugal?

—Don’t give a fuck, says I.

—Lisbon, says the father.

—In which year was the Treaty of Versailles signed?

—Don’t give a fuck, says I.

—1919, says the father.

Read This Too

In children with Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD), there is a distinct pattern of uncooperative and defiant behavior toward figures of authority. The conduct disorder seriously interferes with normal day to day functioning.

The child should be seen by a child psychiatrist who can evaluate the child’s behavior. Along with a diagnosis the psychiatrist will work with school professionals and others to have specific educational tests done to clarify if a learning disability exists and to design a more appropriate educational programme for the child. Medication may be prescribed for hyperactivity or distractibility.

Oppositional Defiant Disorder

The disorder is seen in children below the age of 10 years. While there is an absence of severe aggressive, violent or dangerous acts against others, continuous disobedient, provocative and defiant behavior toward authority figures will be present.

Diagnostic Guidelines

The essential feature of this disorder is a pattern of persistently negativistic, hostile, defiant, provocative, and disruptive behavior, which is clearly outside sociocultural norms. Social, occupational and educational functioning will be impaired.

Diagnostic Criteria

A period of six months or more, during which four (or more) of the following are present:

often deliberately annoys people

often loses temper

often actively defies adults’ requests

often ignores rules

often blames others for his or her misbehavior

is often hypersensitive

is often vindictive

is often easily annoyed by others

often argues with adults and shows resentment toward them

is often angry

Two hundred and thirty-two words, ha? How do you like that cabbage? That’s the bones of a day’s work nearly. Just like that. Magic. I like the internet. ’Tisn’t total dossing either like, so don’t be getting all thick, cos it’s important for the story so you better have read it. If you didn’t go back and do it now and stop being so lazy.

Everyone wants to be part of the gang. I couldn’t give a flying fuck about no gang. My father said what’s wrong with me is that even as a small child I never wanted to be liked. He said it was a serious fuck-up and the root cause of my trouble. He said there’s a part of the brain that makes people want to be liked but that that part of my brain was fucked. Says he noticed it first when I was about two. See when people are very very small. Say, between the ages of nought and one. People don’t have to be nice. Or make an effort to be liked if they want things. They just have to cry. And then they get fed, or get changed, or get more clothes put on them or get people to shut up around the house so they can sleep. Then you see when people are about two they have to learn to be part of the gang. They can’t just cry for what they want any more. But they automatically learn how to get what they want. By being nice. Doing as you’re told. You see people all want stuff. The little baby wants milk so he automatically cries. Without even having to think about it I suppose.

You come to realise that all this crying business that you’re so good at won’t get you so far any more. You realise that your mammy and daddy aren’t going to be slaves for you for ever. That you’ll have to start doing things for yourself. But it’s not so bad because we are made in such a way that we begin to be able to do things for ourselves at just the right time. So your hands are starting to get handy enough so that you can spoon-feed yourself. And soon you learn to hold your bottom so that mammy or daddy won’t have to be changing your nappy all the time. Of course all this goes on unknown to yourself. It’s automatic. And you also learn that to get things for yourself you have to start behaving in a way mammy and daddy will like. And in a way that everyone will like. You can’t be kicking your mammy or biting people. You have to be a good little boy in order to get what you want. Start saying, ‘Yes please’, and ‘No thanks’. Start saying, ‘Sorry’, before you get the sweets.

This is where my father first noticed the difficulty with me. I was such a terrible two-year-old my mammy and daddy brought me to the doctor who hadn’t seen anything like it before. I refused to do anything for myself and cried the whole time. The more they tried to bribe me into being good with sweets and toys and affection and approval, the more I cried. Then they tried not doing anything for me to see would I start being good and stop biting people and breaking things and screaming and roaring and crying. They stopped giving me food. They tempted me to be good. If I behaved for a little while they’d give me food. I wouldn’t behave and went throwing things. Then they gave me food in case I’d starve and I threw it at them. We all used to go to sleep together then and I’d cry myself to sleep while they’d cuddle me and pamper me. I loved my mammy and daddy but I couldn’t believe they wanted me to be good. I think I must have been very disappointed at that time.

Even after I had started school I was still going to see these doctors who were doing all sorts of special tests and experiments. In these experiments they realised that I wouldn’t do anything if I knew that someone wanted me to do it. Even if I wanted to do it myself I wouldn’t do it if I knew someone else like the doctors wanted me to do it. Not even the smallest thing. I wouldn’t even look at something they asked me to look at. I wouldn’t even say a single word that they wanted me to say.

There was this one test that the mother told me about that they did. I was four and I really wanted more than anything else in the world a toy tractor that you could sit on and drive with pedals. So unknown to me my father bought me one of these. A real nice one. They’d it all planned. Himself and the doctor. So this one day when I went to the doctor for the tests what was inside in the doctor’s room only the tractor. Over beside the desk. Then the doctor explained to me that I could have the tractor if I just did one tiny thing for him first. All I had to do was look at a picture on the wall for one second. I wouldn’t do it so he gets the picture off the wall and tries to bring it down in front of me so I’d have to look at it. I knew what he was at so I closed my eyes and put my two hands over them. I wouldn’t take my hands away from my eyes for the whole session with the doctor. Three-quarters of an hour. Then my mother came to collect me and I still wouldn’t take my hands down and open my eyes. I didn’t open them until I was getting out of the car to go in home. And even then my mam says I opened one eye a tiny bit first to make sure the picture they wanted me to look at wasn’t around. Fuck the tractor. That’s what I said to my father. So that was my problem. I’d do anything in the world except what people wanted me to do. Then I started school and that all changed. Kind of.

—But you’d better watch it, the father used to say.

—The nail that sticks out gets hammered in.

—The Japanese know their shit Charlie.

My father knew from the word go though that I wasn’t interested.

—Will you ever quit the fecking shit?

—Get with the programme man for the love of Christ.

He gave up on me then.

A Man Apart

So that lark was keeping all the experts off the streets and was keeping me from being expelled. At the end of the day I reckon they secretly knew that the real problem was that I didn’t give a fuck.

They had my teachers reading about ODD so I was let away with murder. I was being praised left, right and centre. Any tiny bit of work at all that I decided to do next thing I was the best thing since sliced blah.

—Well done Charlie.

—Charlie that’s excellent.

—Brilliant work Charlie.

Anyhow the beginning and the end of it all was that I didn’t have to do work in school any more if I didn’t want to. I wouldn’t learn where the river Boyne was or which county was Antrim and which was Armagh. Or what the capital of Canada was. Or who came after Henry VIII. Or how the Irish made such a bollicks of fighting off the English for eight hundred years. Or what was the speed of sound. Or the Irish for cousin. Or how to spell pneumonia. All the useless shite that they try and squeeze into your head. I didn’t have to pay a single ounce of attention to any of it. But I had to be in a classroom somewhere until I was sixteen cos that was the law.

So as long as I stayed half quiet and let the rest of them get on with learning shite I was free as the wind. Well as free as you can be, while sitting in a desk facing a blackboard. I was always sitting at the back of the classroom. When I was put up the front I created havoc. It never took teachers long to learn that ’twas best if I sat at the back. A man apart. That’s what my father calls me. ‘Get the salt there like a good man,’ he’d say. I’d get it then and he’d say, ‘You’re a man apart.’ Been saying it to me all my life, he has.